Courtney Hodges

Courtney Hicks Hodges (5 January 1887-16 January 1966) was a General of the US Army who commanded the US First Army during World War II.

Biography
Courtney Hicks Hodges was born in Perry, Georgia, United States on 5 January 1887, and he dropped out of West Point in 1908 due to low math scores. Hodges served with George Marshall in the Philippines and with George S. Patton in Mexico during his early US Army career, and he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel during World War I; he received a Distinguished Service Cross for leading an attack across the Marne River. Hodges graduated from the Command and General Staff College in 1925 and the Army War College in 1934, and he became commandant of the US Army Infantry School in 1941. That same year, he was promoted to Major-General and given a corps command, and he served as deputy commander of the US First Army under Omar Bradley, taking part in Operation Overlord in 1944. In August 1944, Bradley became commander of the 12th US Army Group, and Hodges took over the First Army. His troops were the first ones to liberate Paris in large numbers, and they advanced through France, Belgium, and Luxembourg on the way to Germany. Before, during, and after the Battle of the Bulge, the First Army fought at the Battle of Aachen, the Battle of Huertgen Forest, and other Siegfried Line operations, costing the Americans 140,000 men. On 7 March 1945, the US 9th Armored Division captured a bridge over Remagen, spearheading the crossing of the Rhine. On 15 April, he became the second American soldier to rise from the rank of private to four-star general, after Walter Krueger, a fellow World War II general. He was present at both the surrenders of Nazi Germany and Japan, one of few men to do so. He led the First Army on Governors Island, New York until 1949, and he died in San Antonio, Texas in 1966 at the age of 79.